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silly at having come. “Just thought maybe you could give me the once-over and find out what’s responsible. Maybe some vitamins might do the trick.”
    â€œHow long has it been since you had a complete physical?”
    â€œAbout a year and a half. Yes, just about that long. Ben Nilson was my doctor and he’s been gone about that long. I haven’t bothered to see anyone else. There was no need, really. But my wife’s been after me,” which wasn’t true. He’d told Ceil only that he was tired. “She thought it time for me to have a checkup. You know women.” He squashed his hands between his knees. “We heard from several people about you, that you were first-rate.” The young doctor inclined his head slightly, acknowledging the compliment. “So I thought I might as well come to you and locate the trouble.”
    The doctor drew a form toward himself and clicked open his pen. “If you’ll just answer a few questions for me,” he said. “Mother and father alive?”
    â€œMy mother’s been dead for almost twenty-five years. She died in her sleep. Hadn’t been sick a day. It was a coronary occlusion.” He stopped, remembering.
    The doctor looked up, waiting.
    â€œMy father’s hale and hearty,” he continued hastily, reassuring the doctor. “He’s seventy-three and his mother lived to be almost a hundred. She died a month before her hundredth birthday.” Surely that gave him points. “She was a tough old girl,” he added irreverently.
    â€œYou are … how old, Mr. Hollander?” The doctor’s voice was stern. He gave his age, noticed a shaving nick on the doctor’s chin. Aha. Unsteady hands, eh. That’s not good. Watch your step, my lad.
    â€œDo you smoke or drink to excess?” the doctor pursued, frowning, perhaps reading his thoughts.
    â€œA couple of drinks before dinner. Sometimes a couple more at a party. I gave up smoking once or twice. Can’t seem to stick to it.” His hand dove into his pocket, patting the emptiness there nervously. PLEASE DON’T SMOKE , he’d been told in no uncertain terms by the sign in the doctor’s outer office.
    â€œDrink a lot of coffee?”
    â€œTwo, three cups a day. None at night, unless we go out to dinner.” It seemed to him he was acquitting himself nobly, giving all the right answers. Perhaps he’d get an A when the doctor dismissed him. He listed recent illnesses (a bout with bronchitis in the fall, hepatitis four years ago), and the doctor directed him into the examining room, told him to slip on one of those backward hospital gowns designed to humiliate, and he’d be in to take a blood sample, blood pressure, and so forth. Those gowns freaked him out, as John would say. Decorated by a string of faded numerals, they reminded him of Dachau or Buchenwald. Emaciated arms bearing serial numbers. Gas chambers. He shook his head, feeling slightly fuzzy. He undressed quickly, concerned that the nurse with the birthmark might come in and find him standing naked and afraid. While he waited he studied the doctor’s medical credentials hanging on the wall to make sure everything was on the up-and-up. It would be just his luck to get one of those guys who masquerade as doctors with a mail-order diploma.
    Presently the doctor returned, whistling under his breath. He wrapped the blood pressure bandage around Henry’s arm, pumping vigorously as the cloth tightened. “Not bad, not bad at all,” the doctor said approvingly. He felt quite proud that his blood pressure at least hadn’t let him down. The doctor then inserted a needle into his vein and they both watched as his blood was sucked out of him and into the tube. Suppose his vein had come up dry. What then?
    When this was over, the doctor told him to please lie back on the table. After some prodding and poking (This hurt? How about this?) he was told